Lightboard

Lightboard is a glass chalkboard pumped full of light. It's for recording video lecture topics. You face toward your viewers, and your writing glows in front of you.

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I'm an engineering prof at Northwestern University. In the classroom I use a chalkboard for drawings and equations. Recently I've wanted to record short video lectures for my electronics design course, both for online education and for flipped classes. (Flipped or hybrid classes means that students watch lecture material online, to free up classroom time for interactive activities.)

Filming a chalkboard lecture results in a dismal video. Good video lectures have usually gone through a lot of post-production editing to merge a video of the instructor speaking to the camera, with graphics to illustrate the material. Nice, but time consuming.

Moreover, while teaching, I work the board. I point to terms in equations, illustrate movement in diagrams -- I talk with my hands! It's natural for humans and maybe also for chimps to "follow the hands."

The Lightboard lets me draw highly visible sketches and equations as I lecture, work with my drawings in a natural way, face the camera, and capture good quality video without post-production editing. 

Also, I can superimpose graphics such as videos or powerpoint slides. When I do that I watch my writing plus the graphics in a monitor in order to point to the graphics or draw on them.